Composition

The Discordian calendar has five 73-day seasons: Chaos, Discord, Confusion, Bureaucracy, and The Aftermath. The Discordian year is aligned with the Gregorian calendar and begins on January 1, thus Chaos 1, 3182 YOLD is January 1, 2016 Gregorian.

The Erisian week consists of five days: Sweetmorn, Boomtime, Pungenday, Prickle-Prickle, and Setting Orange. The days of the week are named after the five basic Discordian elements: Sweet, Boom, Pungent, Prickle, and Orange. There are 73 of these weeks per year and every year begins with Sweetmorn.

Every fourth year in the Discordian calendar, starting in 2 YOLD, an extra day is inserted between Chaos 59 and Chaos 60 called St. Tib's Day. This is because 4 years + 1 day = 5, a holy number, but the Discordian leap year also coincides with the Gregorian one. The result of this is that any given day of the year in the Discordian calendar may be taken to correspond to the same day of the year in the Gregorian calendar, and vice versa, although some users of the calendar believe that it is tied to the Julian calendar and so will diverge from the Gregorian in 3266 YOLD (AD 2100). St. Tib's day is considered outside of the Discordian week.

There are Apostle Holydays on the 5th day of each season, named after the 5 Discordian apostles: Mungday, for Hung Mung; Mojoday, for Dr Van Van Mojo; Syaday, for Sri Syadasti; Zaraday, for Zarathud; and Maladay, for Malaclypse the Elder. There are also Season Holydays on the 50th of each season: Chaoflux, Discoflux, Confuflux, Bureflux, and Afflux.

Only these eleven dates are named in the Principia Discordia; however, Discordians have felt free to invent other holidays which have become popular to varying degrees. Some of these include Discordians for Jesus/Love Your Neighbor Day (March 25/Discord 11); Jake Day (April 6/Discord 23 or occasionally May 23/Discord 70), a day to send tongue-in-cheek letters, emails or faxes to an official or bureaucracy; Saint Camping's Day (May 21/Discord 68), a day to make End of Days predictions and share them in social media; Towel Day (May 25/Discord 72); Mid Year's Day (July 2/ Confusion 37); X-Day (July 5/Confusion 40); and Multiversal Underwear Day (August 10/Bureaucracy 3).[4]

Implementations

Ddate, a program that prints the current date in the Discordian calendar, was part of the util-linux package containing basic system utilities.[5] As such, it had been included at least since 1994 in nearly all Linux distributions. In August 2011 however, one of the maintainers of util-linux made ddate optional, and by default omitted.[6] In October 2012, ddate was completely removed from util-linux.[7] The ddate program now has an upstream source.[8] There was some controversy,[9][10] but in the end, anyone wishing to reintroduce ddate to a distribution will have to create a separate package based on the new upstream. This has been done for Debian, Fedora Linux,[11] and Gentoo Linux[12] for example.

There are many other programs with similar functionality, such as HodgePodge,[13] an Android widget. Discordian-calendar is an implementation using Java 8's date and time classes.[14]

Celebration

Arise early (ish - before 12pm is usually seen as polite, but it's not set in stone or anything, so don't worry about it unduly. 6am is ideal). Be sure you haven't bathed since last Pungenday, throw open your doors, windows, what-have-yous and praise Eris loudly thus:

Hail Eris, Goddess of the days! Sniff me on this Pungenday! Be sure I whiff suitably, like a mangy badger's arse after a long sauna! Whoof!

Celebration

The Principia Discordia doesn’t indicate what to do, but do something that promotes Discord, or maybe Disco.

Dress as you would to go to a disco sometime in the 1950s through 1970s, imagine you’re the Disco King or Queen (or both), then begin dancing to the music in your head. Pretend the discotheque is at your local market, a playground, or in front of a house of worship. Leave before the police arrive. If one shows up before you depart, tell the officer, “Love the threads. Wanna boogie?” If the officer declines the invitation, apologize profusely for your mistake and claim you forgot to take your medication.

In the beginning there was VOID, who had two daughters; one (the smaller) was that of BEING, named ERIS, and one (the larger) was of NON-BEING, named ANERIS.[8]

The sterile Aneris becomes jealous of Eris (who was born pregnant), and starts making existent things non-existent. This explains why life begins, and later ends in death.

And to this day, things appear and disappear in this very manner.[8]

The names of Eris and Aneris (who are later given a brother, Spirituality), are used to show some fundamental Discordian principles in "Psycho-Metaphysics":

The Aneristic Principle is that of APPARENT ORDER; the Eristic Principle is that of APPARENT DISORDER. Both order and disorder are man made concepts and are artificial divisions of PURE CHAOS, which is a level deeper than is the level of distinction making.[9]